Environmental Issues, Their Causes, and Sustainability
G. Tyler Miller’s
Living in the Environment
13 th Edition
Chapter 1

Key Concepts

Growth and Sustainability

Resources and Resource Use

Pollution

Causes of Environmental Problems

Living More Sustainably

Ecology – scientific study of the relationship between living organisms and their environment.

Living More Sustainably

Environmental Science
 interdisciplinary science that uses natural and social sciences to help us understand:
1.
how the earth works
2.
how we are affecting the earth’s systems
3.
how to deal with environmental problems

Living More Sustainably

Groups involved:

Ecologists

Environmental Scientists

Conservation biologists

Environmentalists

Preservationists

Conservationists

Restorationists
Which are you?

• solar capital
• natural capital/resources
• solar energy

Objectives

Differentiate between ecology and environmental science.
 Define the term “ecological footprint” and calculate it based on varying scenarios.

Discuss sustainability and how factors associated with ecological footprints may impact it.

Environmentally Sustainable
Society?
• An Environmentally Sustainable
Society does not:
1.
deplete or degrade the earth’s natural resources
2. prevent current and future generations of humans and other species from meeting their basic needs.

• Living sustainably means:
1. living off the natural income replenished by soils, plants, air, and water.
2.
NOT depleting the earth’s endowment of natural capital that supplies this income.

Activity – Cats in Borneo
 Work with a partner to try and put the order of events of the story of why cats were parachuted into
Borneo.
Early finishers work on signs and safety cartoon.

Bell Ringer
Based on your general knowledge, explain how the economic growth of a country can both help and hurt the environment.

Objectives

Use the Rule of 70 to calculate the doubling time of a population.

Describe the use of Integrated Biosystems
(IBS) to achieve sustainability.

Identify the six economic indicators

Compare developed and developing countries based on their indicators and use of resources.

Agenda

Bell Ringer

Rule of 70

Calculations

Case Study – IBS as a zero emission strategy to achieve sustainability (video clip – 13 min)

Population Growth

Exponential
Growth

Doubling Time/
Rule of 70
Fig. 1-2 p. 4

• 70 / percentage of growth rate = doubling time in years
• Example in 1963 the world population grew by 2.1%:
70 / 2.1 = 33.3 years
• What would be the doubling time at a rate of 1.28%? 0.1%? 1.6%?

World Population
Fig. 1-1 p. 2

• At the current rate of 1.28%:
–4 days = + number of Americans killed in all US wars
–2 months = + population of the LA basin
–1.6 years = + 129 million killed in all the wars of the past 200 years
–3.6 years = + 288 million (US pop. 2002)
–16 years = + 1.28 billion (China pop.
2002)

• Zero Emissions –
• Integrated Biosystems –
• Video Case Study
– Identify the steps in this IBS
– What kind of IBS strategy might be used by our school?

Economic Growth

Gross National Income (GNI)

Formerly called GNP

GNI PPP is better for comparisons

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Gross World Product (GWP)

Per Capita GNI (formerly GNP)

Per Capita GNI PPP

Economic Development
 Economic development – improvement of living standards by economic growth.
 Countries are classified based mostly on their degree of industrialization and per Capita GNI.

Economic Development

Developed Countries – most highly industrialized with high per capita GNI
PPPs (above $10,750 usually).
Examples? -

Economic Development

Developing Countries – middle income, moderately developed ($10, 750 -
$2,701; and low income countries (less than $2,701).

Examples? -

• Developed:
– 1.2 billion people
– 19% of world pop.
– 85% of world’s wealth
– use 88% of resources
– produce 75% of the pollution.
• Developing
– 5 billion people
– 81% of world pop.
– 15% of world’s wealth
– use 12% of resources
– produce 25% of the pollution.

Economic Development
 Positive Aspects
 Life expectancy doubled (36 – 72) from
1900 – 2002
(76 developed, 65 developing)
 Infant mortality dropped (60% developed;
40% developing) from 1955 – 2002.
 Global food production has outpaced population growth since 1978
 Rural families with access to safe drinking water increased from 10% in 1955 to 75% now in developing countries.

Economic Development
 Positive Aspects
 We’ve learned to produce more goods with less raw materials.
 Levels of most major air and water pollutants have been reduced in most developed countries.

Economic Development
 Negative Aspects
 Avg. life expectancy is 11 yrs. less in developing countries
 Infant mortality 8 times higher in developing countries
 Industrialized food production harming the environment and may limit future production.
 Air & water pollution too high in developing countries.

Economic Development
 Negative Aspects
 Natural resources are being used unsustainably including:
 extinction of species 100 – 1000 times faster than pre-human times.
 destruction/degradation of wetlands, coral reefs, and forests.
 gradual depletion of ground water.

Economic Development
 Negative Aspects
 Studies by Conservation International:
 73% of habitable land is partially or heavily disturbed by human use.
 Global warming may cause:
 shifting of agricultural land
 alteration of water supplies
 shifting of plants and animals
 rising average sea levels

Economic Development
 Negative Aspects
 1.4 billion – avg. income of less than
$370 per year. ($1/day = acute poverty)
 Half of the world’s population suffer from poverty and are living on $1 - $3 per day. (70% are women & children)
 The gap between the richest and poorest countries is growing.

Globalization
Globalization – the process of social, economic, and environmental global changes lead to an increasingly interconnected world.

Globalization
Economic
Information and Communication
Environmental Effects

Resources
Resources – Anything we obtain from the environment to meet our needs and wants.

Resources

Perpetual
 Renewable

Non-renewable
Fig. 1-6 p. 9

Renewable Resources

Sustainable Yield

Environmental Degradation

Tragedy of the Commons
Refer to Connections, p. 12

Non-Renewable Resources

Energy Resources

Metallic Resources

Non-Metallic
Resources

Reuse

Recycle
Economic Depletion
Fig. 1-7 p. 10

Ecological Footprint
Fig. 1-8 p. 10

www.earthday.net/footprint

Pollution

What is pollution?

Effects of Pollution
Sources

Point

Nonpoint

Dealing With Pollution

Prevention (Input Control)

Cleanup (Output Control)

Environmental and Resource
Problems

Major Problems
(
See Fig. 1-9 p. 12
)

Five Root Causes
Fig. 1-10 p. 12

Air Pollution
• Global climate change
• Stratospheric ozone depletion
• Urban air pollution
• Acid deposition
• Outdoor pollutants
• Indoor pollutants
• Noise
Water Pollution
• Sediment
• Nutrient overload
• Toxic chemicals
• Infectious agents
• Oxygen depletion
• Pesticides
• Oil spills
• Excess heat
Biodiversity Depletion
• Habitat destruction
• Habitat degradation
• Extinction
Major
Environmental
Problems
Food Supply Problems
• Overgrazing
• Farmland loss and degradation
• Wetlands loss and degradation
• Overfishing
• Coastal pollution
• Soil erosion
• Soil salinization
• Soil waterlogging
• Water shortages
• Groundwater depletion
• Loss of biodiversity
• Poor nutrition
Waste Production
• Solid waste
• Hazardous waste
(See Fig. 1-9 p. 12)

Poverty & Environmental
Problems
• Poverty is a major threat to human health and the environment.
• Deplete & degrade forests, grasslands, soils and wildlife for short-term survival.

Poverty & Environmental
Problems
• Live in areas with high levels of pollution and risks of natural disasters.
• Unhealthy and unsafe working conditions for low pay… when they are even available.

Poverty & Environmental
Problems
• Have many children for economic security.
• No retirement plans, social security, or government sponsored health plans.

Poverty & Environmental
Problems
• One in every three children under age 5 suffer from malnutrition.
• 13,700 children die prematurely every day from malnutrition and infectious diseases.

Resource Consumption and
Environmental Problems
•
Affluenza – the unsustainable addiction to over consumption and materialism. (Shop til you drop virus)
•
1 American = 27 tractor-trailer loads/year
•
All Americans = 7.9 billion truckloads/year

• Admit there’s a problem
•
Ask:
–
Do I really need this?
–
Can I buy it used?
–
Can I borrow one?
–
Avoid other shopaholics and malls.

• Historian Arnold Toynbee’s true measure of a civilization’s growth –
–
True growth occurs as civilizations transfer an increasing proportion of energy and attention from the material side of life to the nonmaterial side and thereby develop their culture, capacity for compassion, sense of community, and strength of democracy.

Can Affluenza help the problem?
•
Affluent countries have more money for improving environmental quality.

Environmental Impact
Fig. 1-11 p. 13

Environmental Interactions
Fig. 1-12 p. 14

•
Two extremes:
–
Technological optimists
–
Environmental pessimists
• “I have no hope for a conservation based on fear” ~ Aldo Leopold,
Conservationist

Environmental Worldviews

Planetary Management

We are in charge of nature

We will find new resources as old ones run out.

Global economic growth is unlimited

Success depends on how we manage the earth’s systems, mostly for our benefit.

Environmental Worldviews

Stewardship View

We have a ethical responsibility to care for nature.

We probably wont run out of resources but they should not be wasted.

Encourage environmentally beneficial economic growth and discourage that which is harmful.
 Success depends on we manage the earth’s systems for our benefit AND the rest of nature.

Environmental Worldviews

Environmental Wisdom View

Nature exists for all species, not just us and we are not in charge of the earth.

Resources ARE limited, and should not be wasted.

Encourage earth-sustaining economic growth and discourage earth-degrading growth.

Success depends on learning how the earth sustains itself and using these lessons to determine how we think and act.

Environmentally-Sustainable
Economic Development
Social Economic Social Economic
Sustainable
Solutions
Environmental
Environmental
Traditional decision making
Fig. 1-13 p. 17
Decision making in a sustainable society